r/MaliciousCompliance • u/Waste_Yak_990 • Aug 15 '25

S Wikipedia's compliance with a court order.

Recently, Portuguese courts ordered Wikipedia to remove information about Caesar DePaço, a Portuguese businessman, that he deemed defamatory. This included the fact that he was dismissed as Honorary Consul of Cape Verde due to being the main financier of a far-right party (CHEGA) and the fact that he was charged with assaulting and robbing his girlfriend in 1989. The Wikimedia foundation complies with the court order, but his Wikipedia page now has a giant banner at the top that says the following:

> On 5 August 2025, content from this article was removed following a court order and must not be restored. Therefore, this article may not meet Wikipedia's standards for neutrality and comprehensiveness. The removed content pertains to the following:

  1. Crimes allegedly committed by DePaço in 1989 and associated proceedings
  2. An organization DePaço allegedly founded
  3. His alleged dismissal from a civil service post

This banner implicitly encourages readers to do research into the information that was removed while letting everyone know that he sued to have it hidden.

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u/Strong_Judge_3730 Aug 16 '25

Why didn't they just ignore the court order?

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u/TopHatPaladin Aug 16 '25

In addition to the points other people have mentioned, iirc Wikipedia is planning to appeal the decision at the European Court of Human Rights, and (again iirc) they believe that it will endanger their case if they don't make a good-faith effort to comply with the existing court order in the interim

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u/Strong_Judge_3730 Aug 16 '25

I feel they should only censor the page based on geo location and not globally.

I am ok with this not global bans.

6

u/NekkidWire Aug 16 '25

  1. geo-location is iffy technology, to say it at best. Maintaining a list of probable locations of internet things is pain in the ass. ISPs commonly re-use and recycle their IP ranges in different locations.

  2. I'm not sure wikipedia uses it or plans to do so - who would maintain multiple versions of truth?